Space bacteria
Wherever humans go, our bacterial companions will follow. That’s as true in space as it is on Earth, and while we’ve known that microbial astronauts are present on the International Space Station, one group of researchers has just found a new reason to worry about them.
A genomic analysis of samples collected from the space toilet aboard the station, among other places, has revealed that some of the bacteria on the ISS possess genes conferring resistance to antibiotics

In 2016, astronomers announced there was a new planet in the outer solar system. Planet Nine, supposedly larger than Neptune and located far beyond the orbits of the planets known so far, is a particular mystery since no one has yet observed it. Scientists have merely tracked its supposed orbit by watching the gravitational pull the planet exerts on the asteroids and space debris near it.
But this isn’t the first time scientists have predicted planets before spotting them. It’s not e

By firing plastic, lead and glass projectiles into clumps of dust, researchers are improving our understanding of how planets form in the universe.
Planets start out as loose clumps of dust grains. And, like flour clumps up as you mix it into cake batter, cosmic dust clumps eventually build up to become planets like Earth as gravity pulls them together. But there’s still much to be understood about this process. So, to investigate some of the dynamics behind this process, researchers shot

A future on the Moon
To support a potential, future lunar base, researchers at the European Space Agency (ESA) have 3D-printed and baked fake Moon dust into screws, gears, and even a coin.
Both private and government space agencies have expressed serious intentions and started developing plans to build a human-inhabited base on the Moon. But it takes a lot of fuel, cargo capacity, and money to launch things into space and land them on the moon. And building a lunar base from scratch will take

Perhaps no other star system has elicited so much wonder, mystery and frustration as Barnard’s Star.
Astronomers announced last Wednesday they’d discovered a planet in its thrall weighing in at around three Earth-masses, with a frigid, 233-day orbit. The find finally answers whether we have any planetary neighbors in the second-closest system to Earth (after Alpha Centauri).
This follows more than 50 years of scrutinizing the star, and coming up empty. A 1999 study ruled out any gas